When the world finally invents time traveling, yesterday – January 11, 2017 – will be the day that NFL people travel back to and try to alter. Yesterday was the day that the San Diego Chargers announced their intended move to Los Angeles, and the NFL continued to implode on itself.

There will now be two teams in Los Angeles, including one that just feels wrong, to put it nicely. The Chargers flat out do not belong in Los Angeles. No one from the area wants them there and no one from the area will support them. Period.

The NFL will have to wait no later than week one to find that out, because in week 1 the Chargers face the Oakland Raiders and when the 27,000 seat StubHub Center is painted in 90% black and silver, the NFL and the Chargers will realize just how badly they’ve messed up.

Ever since the Rams and Raiders moved from Los Angeles in 1995, the NFL has desperately been looking to move a team back to LA. It’s why commissioner Roger Goodell ignored every rule in the rulebook to allow Rams owner Stan Kroenke to snatch his team out of St. Louis and move straight into the presumed open arms of Los Angeles.

Except LA’s arms weren’t open for a losing team.

The Rams suck and they’ve sucked for a long time now. But, being buried in the small midwest market of St. Louis, the NFL and everyone else has been able to mostly ignore how badly the Rams have sucked. But after a 4-12 season, they can’t anymore.

In their grand return to Los Angeles, the Rams finished 4-12 and somehow managed to be even worse off the field than they were on it. There was drama between now fired head coach Jeff Fisher and team legend Eric Dickerson. Unnamed team personnel were taking shots at each other anonymously in a Sports Illustrated article. The same Sports Illustrated article detailed an anonymous head coach calling the Rams a “Junior High football team.” Star running back Todd Gurley openly complained that the team was running a “pop warner offense.”

The list goes on and on and on without even mentioning that General Manager Les Snead traded away a bounty of draft picks to trade up to #1 in the 2016 draft and select the presumed franchise quarterback Jared Goff, which has turned into an absolute dumpster fire of a situation.

After a 4-12 disaster of a season, the NFL can no longer ignore the facts of the Los Angeles situation. LA has a market for the Rams, but that market will not accept losing and will not accept another team.

The attendance for the Rams’ home games at the Coliseum noticeably diminished all the way to the point that the stadium looked pathetically empty in a 42-7 blowout at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons. As far as television goes, the Rams averaged a 9.4 rating. While in St. Louis, a much smaller market, the lowest rating the Rams ever got in their 21 years of playing there was a 10.4, and that came during the 2013 season when a St. Louis Cardinals’ World Series game was being played simultaneously.

Like I said, while the Rams were in St. Louis, the NFL was able to mostly ignore how bad the team was and bury them underneath all of the other teams in bigger markets. In St. Louis, sports are our thing, so on a Sunday afternoon we really had nothing better to do than watch our football team lose week after week after week after year after year after year.

Los Angeles is not St. Louis and they will not tolerate losing football.

LA is a sports market that already includes two baseball teams, two hockey teams, two college football teams that are more popular than the Rams or Chargers will ever be, and two basketball teams. The sports market was stacked and set in LA before the NFL even came knocking on the door a second time around.

However, the move of the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles at least made some sense. The Rams were born and raised in LA, spending nearly 46 years there before being uprooted and sent to St. Louis. There was a holdover Rams fan base in LA, and it was extremely plausible that the Rams could succeed there. Putting their disastrous first season aside, the Rams’ move to Los Angeles at least made a lot of sense.

But, the Chargers? Yikes.

I have long been saying that the NFL’s insatiable appetite for money will be their ultimate downfall, and it’s starting to manifest itself in an ugly way that is making my prediction look startlingly true. It wasn’t enough to just move one team into the untapped Los Angeles market to try and take as much LA money as possible and put it into NFL owners’ pockets; no, the NFL had to take a second team and move them there too.

In an article written by Albert Breer this morning for Sports Illustrated, he points out that the NFL didn’t want the Chargers to move to Los Angeles and, “some owners feel bad about taking the team out of its home in San Diego.”

As much as I love Albert Breer, he seems to have been blinded by the NFL machine.

You really think the NFL doesn’t want a second team in Los Angeles? That they actually wanted to keep the Chargers in San Diego? If the NFL actually wants something, they make it happen. That showed last January when the Rams were moved to Los Angeles, and it’s the kind of power that the NFL just inherently has in our society.

The NFL can do what they want, when they want, so to paint them as some sort of victim of circumstance and say that they didn’t want to move the Chargers to Los Angeles is just a giant load of crap. The NFL wants to suck as much money out of LA as possible, and Dean Spanos is leading the charge after getting spurned by NFL owners in a vote last January that gave Stan Kroenke rights to the coveted Inglewood plot of land to build his $2.6 billion palace of a football stadium.

Spanos got rejected last January and is now rejecting the city of San Diego. When the NFL ultimately succumbs to financial ruin and is rejected from our society, we’ll look back on this day as the beginning of its long and slow descent into oblivion.

We have long been able to simply enjoy the game of football without any of the behind-the-scenes greed that the NFL has always been run with. But now that greed is being pushed to the forefront of the picture, and fans are no longer able to simply ignore it.

Attendance numbers were down across the league this year. Television ratings were down so far that the NFL panicked and began giving away games for free, live streaming Thursday night games on Twitter in an effort to “understand and cater to the modern NFL fan.”

The NFL is beginning to fade, they have nobody to blame but themselves, and allowing a vengeful Dean Spanos to move his Chargers from San Diego to Los Angeles is simply a microcosm of the problems that are so deeply rooted in the NFL’s culture it will be impossible to fix them.

In an extremely compelling and honest article, Jack Dickey of Sports Illustrated writes that, “An observer from outside the sports world could reasonably conclude that the NFL is actually a trade group for land barons, and that the game of football is just used as a front to disguise that.”

Dickey carries on, “Most owners seem to aspire to little more than keeping up with the Joneses – Jerry and Stephen, in this case. Each new stadium and each renovation pushes existing stadiums toward supposed obsolescence, hence the recent remodeling efforts at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Arrowhead Stadium, Bank of America Stadium, and at New Era Field. Lambeau Field has been renovated twice since 2000.”

The article is finished when Dickey writes, “Recall, also, that the supposed decrepitude of the Edward Jones Dome—it had fallen out of the “first-tier” of NFL stadiums—allowed the Rams to break their lease in 2015. What’s better than a new building when fans are footing the bill? A rising tide lifts all boats; construction seems to spur only more construction.”

Owners don’t care about winning football or the fans that love their game or anything of that sort. Owners care about how much their “business” – in this case, their team – is worth and whether or not they look better and richer than the guy next to them.

It’s the reason why the Rams refused to give the city of St. Louis even a remote shot at keeping the Rams, because Stan Kroenke didn’t look good or rich by owning a team in St. Louis with a stadium that looked pathetic next to the stadium the Dallas Cowboys play in. So he needed to move to Los Angeles and build a palace.

And now it’s the reason why Dean Spanos refuses to stay in San Diego. Spanos is willingly forking over nearly $650 million in a relocation fee just so he can move to Los Angeles and share Kroenke’s palace with the Rams when it opens in 2019.

Spanos wanted a new stadium built in San Diego, but he wanted the San Diego taxpayers to foot the majority of the bill instead of himself and his family – which is worth $2.1 billion, might I add. The NFL gave Spanos an unprecedented $300 million grant in an effort to help him build a new stadium in San Diego, but he refused to pay his share, and is opting to move the team to LA instead.

Spanos had a choice, he could either have used his $650 million to build a new stadium in San Diego and keep the team there, or he could use it to make a glamorous and bold move to Los Angeles and share the Inglewood stadium. We all know what his choice was, and it is a brutally bad one.

The Chargers’ move is doomed to fail before it even gets going.

The Chargers have been in San Diego for 56 years and have an extremely loyal fanbase that sell out Qualcomm Stadium every single Sunday to watch a team that has won 4 playoff games in 22 years and has only made 1 Super Bowl ever, which it got blown out in. By ditching those fans for Los Angeles, Spanos is essentially alienating one of the NFL’s most loyal fan bases while still counting on them to support his team in Los Angeles.

The Chargers have no fan base in Los Angeles. As LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke pointed out, “the Chargers aren’t even the second team in town behind the Rams. The Chargers aren’t even the third team of interest here behind the Rams and Raiders. The Chargers might not even be in the top-five favorite NFL teams in Los Angeles.”

Like I said, when the Chargers play the Raiders in week one of the 2017-18 NFL season, and the 27,000 seat StubHub Center where they will call ‘home’ is sold out in 90% black and silver, the NFL and Dean Spanos will realize just how badly they’ve messed up.

And there’s no looking back. Once the Chargers begin to fail in Los Angeles, there is no way the city of San Diego will welcome them back. As a citizen of a city that had an NFL team ripped away, the city that the NFL leaves behind has no interest in wanting a team back. The NFL is dead to us, and it’s now dead to San Diego.

Without even getting into the nitty gritty of the financial aspect of this move, I can already guarantee that it will fail just from the simple fact that the Chargers have no fan base in LA and alienated one of the most loyal fan bases in a city that smartly wouldn’t fork over hundreds of millions of dollars for a stadium that would simply benefit a room full of billionaires.

Dean Spanos and the NFL got greedy and impatient, but what’s new?

The NFL has long survived on their greedy business model because they’ve been able to bury it under heaps of football that the masses eagerly gobble up. The NFL’s greed is coming to the forefront, and it will be the result of their ultimate demise.

Yesterday was simply a continuation of the NFL’s ruin, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love every second of it.

At the start of this year, if you had told me that Colin Kaepernick would be relevant again by the end of August, I would have figured that the man had gotten his mojo back and won a starting job in San Francisco. Mostly an NFL afterthought/has-been over the course of the past year or so, Kaepernick is not only relevant again, he has just become the most important athlete in the world.

In case you haven’t heard about the incident yet and were just wondering why in the world I would say such a thing about Colin Kaepernick, here’s a cliff notes version.

Last Saturday, before a home preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, the NFL was having their traditional national anthem festivities. Big flag unveiled on the field, military personnel, the whole 9 yards that they do before every game – the organization actually collects checks from the U.S. Army to do such things. Everyone rose to honor the stars and stripes, except one man.

Kaepernick purposefully chose to stay seated on the bench.

In all my years of attending live sporting events, never have I ever seen a player not stand for the national anthem. It’s just not something that you would normally think to do. Protests are usually reserved for wearing a symbolic shirt during warm-ups – like the LA Clippers did last year – making a symbolic gesture – like the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ gesture that 5 Rams players made when making their entrance from the tunnel last year – or posting something on social media – like everyone does.

By not standing for the national anthem, Kaepernick has taken an often protested topic, and thrust it directly into the spotlight in a not subtle way. And that, right there, is why this is so important.

Everyone is talking about this. From local sports outlets and podcasts to CNN, Kaepernick’s actions have incited widespread opinion and attention from literally anywhere you can think of. If you are an American, and you have seen what he did, you have an opinion on it. Finally, the issues that this country so desperately needs to address are thrust into the limelight in a way that doesn’t involve violence.

There are so many sides and questions about Kaepernick’s protest, though, and I’m just going to try and knock them all out one by one.

First off, the fact that Colin Kaepernick is, well, Colin Kaepernick plays a vital role in this. While people are talking about Kaep’s protest, most of everything I’ve heard has been extremely negative – Saturday on Twitter was possibly one of the most depressing Twitter days ever. But, ask yourself this, if Aaron Rodgers had made this same protest, would we be viewing it in a more positive light? Or at least attempting to sympathize with him more?

Kaepernick’s likability and relevance play a role here. The fact that he is all but certainly on his way out of the NFL has led anonymous GM’s to comment things such as, “I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my team. He’s a traitor.” And the fact that when Kaepernick was relevant he alienated himself and was often perceived as a selfish diva doesn’t help either.

When irrelevant people do relevant things, those relevant things become somewhat squandered and crushed under the weight of irrelevancy. Instead of lauding Kaepernick’s bravery or even remotely attempting to sympathize with his cause, we look at his stupidity, disrespect and view him as a “traitor.”

If LeBron intentionally sat for the national anthem, millions would be lauding him, publicly praising his courage, calling him a hero, all that jazz. But, LeBron didn’t sit for the anthem, and he never will.

But Colin Kaepernick did, and I’m going to put my neck out on the line here by saying that his protest was courageous and needs to be sympathized with.

In a brilliant piece posted on the MMQB, Robert Klemko looked at Kaepernick’s upbringing to go inside the reasoning of how this protest came about. To summarize, Colin was raised by two white parents in a very white area of Northern California; but he was not raised to believe he was white. The Kaepernicks raised their son as a black man, and as a black man in America, Colin Kaepernick has faced all of the injustices that are simply ingrained in our society and glossed over as non-issues.

He’s had enough, and we should all feel the same. Pay attention to Colin Kaepernick’s protest and take a stand of your own. If you simply dismiss it as just another black man crying out for special treatment, you are contributing to the problem we need to solve.

I have never not stood up for the national anthem, and I believe that when times are hardest, the national anthem simply needs to be sung louder and prouder than before. Not to drown out the problems and pretend they aren’t there, but to yell in the face of the error and show that we are stronger and will not back down.

I also believe in the principles that the American flag stands for, and will always respect those principles in any way that I can. But, at the same time, as a straight white male, I haven’t had to face a lick of oppression in my entire life. It might as well be nonexistent to me. So I have no reason to believe that America isn’t perfect the way it is right now.

Colin Kaepernick – along with any black, LGBT person, or woman – does, and Kaepernick stands up for all of them by not standing. He stands up for all of them by not blindly accepting a perfect America, because America isn’t perfect, and everyone needs to recognize that and work together to solve that problem.

This is true activism, taking a huge risk for a cause you believe in; something Kaepernick touched on when he told NFL Network’s Steve Wyche, “I have to stand up for people that are oppressed…If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I took up for what is right.”

You don’t have to agree with Kaepernick, most people don’t, but you must sympathize with him. Everyone has a cause they believe in, a cause that many people disagree with, a cause that they would potentially put themselves out on the line for. Kaepernick is a black man in America who has seen enough violence and heard enough politicians undermining minorities as helpless that he felt strongly enough to protest in such a way that he knew would get the country’s attention.

And, the beauty of his protest was exactly what it was. Kaepernick staying seated during the national anthem hurts literally nobody; not a single person was harmed by what he did. Yet everyone is talking about it and everyone is addressing the issue at hand. That is beautiful, and that is vital.

Too often, protests are either too simple, or too violent to actually accomplish any good. Kaepernick fought back against both of those preconceived notions, and in doing so, has people talking. Is his career on the line? Yes. Is his life potentially on the line? From what I’ve seen on Twitter, yes. But that’s what it takes to get a point across in today’s day and age, and Kaepernick deserves to be applauded for his courage.

The last thing I want to bring up is a point that my dad made while we were talking over dinner the other night. He felt that Kaepernick’s protest not only disrespected the American flag, but also all of the people who had put him in such a position of power to be able to have his protest reach so many people. He disagreed with the protest because he believed it was an abuse of power to get out an opinion.

To me, Kaepernick’s stature makes this protest all the more effective. As I mentioned earlier, maybe you’ve seen the guy next to you in the stands or some other guy in the stands not stand for the national anthem, but you probably haven’t thought anything of it other than, “wow, what an idiot.” The fact that this is Colin Kaepernick making this statement, he of significant fame for being an NFL quarterback of one of the most recognizable franchises in the world, puts this in the rarified air of protests.

This is a legitimately large figure taking an authentic stand and literally putting everything on the line; something we haven’t seen since the days when Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jim Brown would hold press conferences to address social injustices. As I mentioned earlier, no figure with any legitimate stature has really been willing to put their neck out on the line to address America’s inherent ‘ism’ and ‘phobia’ problem – racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.

This protest, however seemingly small in stature it may be, is a pivotal turning point for our current America. We can either brush it off as just another black guy crying foul, or we can seriously address it and make some change. We’ve had plenty of other opportunities, but will this finally be the one?

In a presidential election that is as racially charged as any in the history of ever – and that includes 2 with a black guy running for president, mind you – all candidates will be asked about this. NFL players will be asked about this; from Cam Newton to Bill Belichick, and front office executives too. This issue expands far beyond just an ‘on his way out the door’ NFL quarterback deciding not to stand for the national anthem and extends into the very fabric that our society is currently made up from.

These issues can’t be ignored any longer, so let this be a turning point and not just another empty protest falling on deaf ears. This isn’t a black or white issue, and it isn’t just an NFL issue, it’s a people issue.

Please forgive me, for my emotions are still rather raw following the brutally anticlimactic end of one of the most painful and heartbreaking sagas I have ever experienced. The Rams are gone. It is done, and it is not changing.

My emotions, besides being raw, are mixed. I’m enraged, spiteful and disgusted with the NFL and the whole process of how this all happened. But at the same time, I’m just sad and disappointed. My mom always told me that life wouldn’t always be fair, and this was a cruel reminder of that fact.

We never really had a chance. From the very beginning, this team was destined for doom. The NFL and the Rams lied and squirmed and connived their way back “home” to Los Angeles. The NFL heartlessly lied to St. Louis, promising them a fair chance in keeping their team, when in reality the game was rigged and St. Louis had as much chance of keeping the Rams as you do of winning the Powerball without even buying a ticket.

It was disgraceful and offensive, and the NFL will reap what they sow. Their motives will never equate to true success, and evil always comes back around. Believe that.

As I’ve thought about it over the course of the past 24 hours, I’ve gotten much calmer. I say good riddance to Stan Kroenke and the NFL, two of the most purely corrupt and evil entities in this world. The NFL is an absolute mess, and as I said earlier, they will be ruined in due time as they will reap what they sow and discover that their cartel-esque motives will not be rewarded long term.

This city has had a tough past 18 months; from Ferguson to flooding, the Rams leaving just feels like being kicked while we’re down.

But one thing that no greedy, corrupt organization can ever take away from our city is our guts and our resilience. We are a blue collar town full of people that earn every cent and earn every ounce of respect they gain. We’ve been pushed down before, and we’ll just keep getting up and pushing forward. We are proud and we are strong, nothing can take that.

I said to forgive my emotions earlier, so if you’re reading this cynically please forgive that last, rather cheesy paragraph. I am a proud St. Louisan, born and raised, and unlike Stan, I won’t abandon this city when times get hard.

But as much as I say “good riddance” to the NFL and Kroenke, I will absolutely miss the Rams; more than I’ll ever let on.

The first memory I have of any professional sporting event ever is from the 2004 NFL playoffs. The Rams were playing in Seattle, and the game had gone to overtime. I didn’t know much else, but I knew that the first score won the game, and I knew that the Rams were my hometown team and I wanted them to win even though this was my first exposure to them.

Sure enough, Rams’ QB Marc Bulger lofted a perfect, 51 yard touchdown pass to Shaun McDonald to win the game for the Rams. I went absolutely nuts and was immediately in love. The Rams had my heart.

Turns out, the first Rams’ playoff game that I watched would be my last.

The Rams would never even have another winning season, but that never mattered to me. I supported them through thick and thin, and almost never missed watching a game. I found reasons to root for them and reasons to hope, and when their diabolical owner Stan Kroenke gave us his word, in 2010, that he would never take the Rams from us I believed it with every fiber of my being.

Nowadays, the Rams have naturally been superseded by my love of the St. Louis Cardinals, Blues, and probably even Manchester City FC someday soon, but even still, the thought of not having football in St. Louis is completely foreign to me.

I grew up with the Rams, I fell in love with them, and I always hoped that all of my fandom would someday be rewarded in some fashion. Instead I feel like an idiot for supporting a perennial loser that’s now been ripped out from under my faultless feet like a carpet. I – and all of the other loyal St. Louis Rams fans – are now left sitting hopelessly on our butts watching the dirty carpet we stood on for 21 years be carried away from us without a second thought, and our tailbones are probably bruised from such a nasty fall, not to mention Roger Goodell and Jerry Jones showing up unannounced to give us a few extra kicks to the ribs.

I’ve been asked this multiple times since the news of a Rams relocation was made public, but will I still root for the Rams in Los Angeles? I wish I could say no, but I absolutely still will. The team has my heart, and probably always will in some fashion, and I can’t just snap my fingers and suddenly be completely detached from them emotionally; sports are a part of me and I just can’t let go of the first sports team I ever loved quite so easily.

For the city of St. Louis, this is the right thing. It hurts really badly right now and will leave an eternal scar on our city’s figure, but soon enough we will see and reap the blessings of this. So, instead of looking back I’m going to take a second to look forward.

For the time being, we’re down to two professional teams; the Blues and the Cardinals. Both teams are highly successful, both between the lines and in the community, and both teams have a genuine affection for the city they represent. And, best of all, between Tom Stillman and the DeWitts, we have two of the most loyal and sincerely tremendous ownership groups in all of professional sports.

Having both met, shaken hands with and conversed with Blues’ owner Tom Stillman, I can verify everything said in the above paragraph. We are in good hands.

As for the void left by the NFL, I have no doubts that it will be filled in very short order. The wheels are already beginning to spin on an MLS project, and that process could go very quickly and be here sooner than you might think. St. Louis is a voracious soccer market – as proven by the attendance numbers for both USMNT and USWNT friendlies in combination with St. Louis’ ratings numbers for World Cup games being among the highest in the country – and the MLS would be wise to bring a team here now.

Dave Peacock has expressed his interest in heading up a committee to make things happen, the city has proven that it can put the necessary money on the table to provide a stadium, and I can guarantee that any professional soccer team would be ravenously supported by the best pound-for-pound sports market in the world.

The Rams are gone, and it is very sad. But as we all learned when we were kids, you get back up after you’ve been knocked down; and get back up we certainly will.

I’m damn proud to live in this city and stand beside it during these recent tough times – as I mentioned earlier, beyond just our football team leaving.

The NFL – and Stan Kroenke – will get their punishment in due time. As I said earlier, they will reap what they sow; the corrupt never truly win. And as Batman states in the Dark Knight Rises when asked, “why do we fall?”

Folks today is a good day. The official baseball HOF revealing is this afternoon and it is a time to celebrate the greatness of those selected. Unfortunately, today is also the day after Rams owner Stan Kroenke submitted his official relocation application the NFL. I have read all 29 disgusting pages, and I’m angry. So here we go with the latest installments of Ryan’s Rants.

I’m really not quite sure where to even start on this. I have such strong feelings about Kroenke that if I truly let loose on him it would be quite vulgar and not professional in the slightest, so I’ll try not to tear into him more than I really need to. That being said, good lord do I hate Enos Satan Kroenke, (pronounced ‘cranky’ if you’re Jim Nantz).

“I’m wearing a scarf in public, look how rich I am”

Whenever I see Browns fans complaining about how bad an owner Jimmy Haslam is, I shake my head and say to myself, “man, I wish we had an NFL owner that good.” Haslam’s biggest fault is that he wants to win a title for Cleveland so badly that he has almost zero patience with coaches and administrations and blows things up too often. Yeah it’s frustrating, but at least he cares.

And boy do I wish St. Louis had an NFL owner that even gave half of a rat’s ass about his team. ‘Silent Stanley’ has not once even remotely hinted at any sort of care about how the Rams do. He almost never shows up at games, he’s nowhere to be found for press conferences and he speaks publicly on the team maybe 5 times a year if he’s feeling generous.

So what’s he off doing?

Well, in case you didn’t know, Kroenke owns 4 other major professional sports franchises – the British Premier League Arsenal Gunners, the NBA Denver Nuggets, the NHL Colorado Avalanche, and the MLS Colorado Rapids. Now, besides this just being a recipe for disaster, the last time I checked the NFL had a rule that stated that no NFL owner can own a separate professional franchise. Somehow, Stanley is getting away with it.

And even though I don’t have personal insight on those other teams, I can almost guarantee you that he cares no more about them than he does about the Rams. Stan doesn’t care about the loyal fans that provide his franchises with the monetary support that eventually ends up in his pockets and he doesn’t care about the organizations under which his teams are run. No, Stan Kroenke only cares about one godforsaken thing.

Money

“I don’t know what to do with my hands. Yay Rams”

Now, I’ve criticized the NFL in the past for only caring about money, but to their credit the NFL does actually try to take care of its loyal fans because they understand that without fans there is no NFL. They have their obvious flaws, but the basis of that is somewhat admirable. You take care of the people that support you. Pretty simple concept, right?

Not for Stan apparently.

Between him and his wife – who freaking owns Wal-Mart, might I add – Stan Kroenke has $10 billion. Now, this could just be my middle class quibbling, but what in the hell could you possibly do with $10 billion? I’d run out of ideas after like $2 million. No one can possibly need every penny of $10 billion, that’s just a simple fact of living.

This is why the fact that Kroenke wants to move his NFL team to Los Angeles to make more money just hurts my head to think about. He’s 68 years old, he is worth $5 billion, he owns 5 professional sports franchises, and he wants more money. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GONNA DO WITH MORE MONEY?

Is he saving up for something? Does he need a new Nissan? Does he need to save up to buy razors so he can trim the Hitler-esque mustache that rests above his lips? What could Stan Kroenke possibly need more money for?

Just based off that statement, one might fathom that Kroenke could care about the fans in LA and want to return their Rams to them. But then one would have to go back and realize that Kroenke was one of the main driving forces behind the team originally coming to St. Louis. And, as I mentioned earlier, he does not remotely care about any fan base, which pertains to Los Angeles as well.

In the Rams official, 29 page application to the NFL for relocation, Kroenke sights that St. Louis has promised their fan base a top flight NFL stadium for “30 years” yet that the Jones Dome remains “one of the worst stadiums in professional sports.” While I will not dispute the fact that the Dome is outdated and does need to be replaced, I will dispute the statement that St. Louis has promised a top flight stadium for 30 years.

The Rams just finished their 20th season in St. Louis. Last time I checked, 20 was less than 30. And also, the reason St. Louis hasn’t been able to deliver is because building a new stadium requires significant contribution from ownership, something Kroenke either doesn’t understand or simply laughs off because he needs to spend his billions buying modern artwork or another yacht.

For reference, when Busch Stadium III was constructed in 2006 it had a final cost of $365 million. Granted, this is nowhere close to the $1.1 billion required to construct the Rams proposed new riverfront stadium – we’ll get to that later too – but bear with me. Cardinal ownership footed the bill for $200.5 million or 54.7% of that total cost.

At the time, Cardinal owners were worth roughly $600 million, so this was clearly a huge gamble. The result of this gamble was one of the most beautiful stadiums in professional sports and franchise growth that now sees Cardinal ownership worth over $4 billion. And by the way, the DeWitts are among the most revered and admired figures in St. Louis and the Cardinals basically run this city. We love that team because it loves us.

Kroenke refuses to provide the necessary funds to make the St. Louis riverfront stadium project a reality while still stating that St. Louis has done nothing to make good on its promise to deliver a top flight NFL stadium. Yeah, besides providing a complete and thorough proposal that only needs a thumbs up from the NFL to begin construction, St. Louis has done nothing.

Also, Kroenke calls out Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, citing the “many months of silence” the preceded Nixon’s announcement of a stadium task force. Yeah, the guy who hasn’t spoken to the media since he hired Jeff Fisher in 2012 (that’s 4 years ago, by the way) is calling someone else out for being too quiet.

What the hell are you smiling about with your Donald Trump-looking toupee

The Rams were routinely criticized for their lack of action on a stadium task force while Kroenke never met with Nixon regarding the task force until November 30th of this year, nearly 3 months after the force was formed. And that meeting only happened because NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell nudged Kroenke into it.

As I continue to dive deeper into Kroenke’s comments in his 29 page report full of hypocrisy and filth I just continue to be disgusted and miffed that one man could be so horrible. But, such is the life of Stan Kroenke, the man who claimed in 2010 that he would do “everything I can to keep this team in St. Louis” and has now completely and unfairly torn the team from the city’s clutches without a second thought.

Domestic violence. Two words that I’ve had to think about way, way too much lately; specifically with regards to Greg Hardy, who I’m also sick of thinking about. But for this article I’m going to bring up another name that you might have forgotten about in the NFL’s domestic violence mini-epidemic.

Ray Rice.

Remember him? The guy who punched his wife unconscious before getting on an elevator in Atlantic City in February 2014. The NFL’s original domestic violence case.

Well, Ray Rice is back in the news with his announcement today that he hopes to someday work for the NFL to raise awareness of domestic violence.

In past articles, I’ve said that I typically want to give athletes the benefit of the doubt with regards to most things. And that being said, I want to believe that Ray Rice has sincere desires to make a positive impact on the NFL in light of his awful mistake 2 February’s ago.

In case you need a refresher on Rice’s story, here you go, cliff notes style.

In February of 2014, Rice and his fiancé Janay Palmer were arrested, detained, and released from jail on charges of a “minor domestic dispute.” TMZ released a video of Rice dragging an unconscious Palmer from an Atlantic City elevator a few days later, and in July the NFL suspended Rice for 2 games. You know, because they need to at least pretend to care.

Then, on September 8th, TMZ released the video of Rice punching Palmer out cold before dragging her lifeless body into the elevator and later dragging her out. The Ravens immediately released Rice hours after the video was released. The NFL then took until the next day to suspend Rice “indefinitely.”

Then came the controversy. The NFL claimed they had never seen the video of Rice punching Palmer until TMZ released it. “You’re telling me that the NFL, one of the most powerful organization on the planet, could not access a video of one of its high profile athletes committing a horrific crime before freaking TMZ could?! Are you kidding me?” I thought.

It was an absolute debacle, both for Rice and the NFL. Rice hasn’t played a down since being released, as he shouldn’t because there is no place in this league for a man who domestically abuses a woman.

But, through all of this, Palmer stood by Rice’s side and supported him. Publicly appearing at press conferences with him, having his back, doing interviews in support of him, even finishing the engagement and getting married.

And though I’m usually not much for athlete apologies, I really did feel for Rice because his remorse was clear and I truly believe he just made a terrible mistake that he’ll regret for the rest of his life.

But Palmer’s remorse also tells me she was nearly equally involved in the incident and feels responsibility for it as well, which doesn’t get talked about in the media because female-on-male domestic violence cases are mostly a joke to the general public. But that’s a different topic for a different day.

And with Rice’s announcement that he is hoping to join the NFL in a role of raising domestic violence awareness is big; big for Rice, and big for the league’s image in trying to come out of a sort of Dark Age in player crime.

But with Rice’s announcement came a sad realization on my part that isn’t remotely surprising, but maddening and unfair.

Right now, the words ‘domestic violence’ seem to be synonymous with Greg Hardy’s name; and that was the first thing that came up in my mind with Rice’s announcement.

I’ve written on the league’s despicable enabling of Hardy solely because he’s a good player, and how unacceptable it is. But at the same time, the league has taken a strong public stand with regards to Rice’s case, suspending him for a really long time in conjunction with all the owners seemingly banding together to not employ him.

So it feels like they’ve done right with the Rice case. But they haven’t. Not even close. Everyone is lacking one key ingredient here.

Consistency.

There is only one reason why Greg Hardy still has a job in the NFL and Ray Rice doesn’t, and probably won’t. It’s because pass rushers are in higher demand and harder to find than running backs these days.

Think about it. Every team in today’s NFL needs a pass rush, it’s imperative to defensive success, and pass rushers are more overvalued than ever. But while every team also needs a running game, running backs have become much, much easier to find; as teams are now finding starting backs in late rounds of the draft and the Patriots just sign a new guy off the street and he runs for 200 yards the same week. So, in today’s NFL, the pass rusher is just worth astronomically more than the running back.

Greg Hardy is a very talented pass rusher, and is being paid and treated as such by the Cowboys, who continue to put up and enable all of his remorseless bullshit that hurts my mind every time he does something new and stupid.

Ray Rice is a talented running back, but running backs aren’t worth a lot anymore, so no team is willing to take the flak that will come with signing Rice when they can just go get another guy that can’t do the job as well as Rice, but won’t have all the baggage and won’t make their team image look so bad.

That, right there, is what’s wrong with the league and why I find myself trying not to like or support the NFL at any opportunity I can get. If a player is talented and can play a vital role, he’ll be coddled and enabled, no matter what kind of shit he puts up.

But if a player, like Rice, isn’t as useful to teams, they won’t even give him a remote glance because the negative pushback that would come from the signing just isn’t worth it to NFL teams’ precious reputations.

Again, let’s look specifically at the cases of Rice and Hardy.

As soon as the video of Rice punching Palmer was made public, Rice was released, suspended, ridiculed, and all good thoughts of him were exiled by the thought police. When the pictures of the injuries sustained by Hardy’s ex-girlfriend after his savage beating of her, the only thing that happened was a bunch of angry bloggers, feminists, and just people in general calling for Hardy’s job.

Did anything remotely close to what happened to Rice happen to Hardy? Absolutely not; in fact, I didn’t hear a peep from the Dallas Cowboys or the NFL after the pictures were released. They just sort of pretended that it wasn’t happening and that all was right with the world.

It’s completely unacceptable that guys like Hardy are enabled, while guys like Rice are spurned and ignored. Have some goddamn consistency and humanity. Have the balls to do what’s right and evaluate both these situations in the same light.

No amount of talent should ever dictate whether or not a player gets punished for breaking the freaking law and committing one of the worst crimes known to man short of murder. That’s just not how this world works.

But it’s how the NFL works. If you’ve got talent, you’ve got a spot in the league, no matter what you do. But if you’re expendable and your position isn’t valued as much as it should be, you better be an absolutely perfect human being, or one slip up and your job is gone.

Should this change? Of course; but will it? Not a chance. Money is king in the NFL, always has been and always will be. That will never change, and Greg Hardy makes the league a lot of money off his talent and merchandise credibility.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a problem; a serious freaking problem. A problem that would take years to change because it’s deeply rooted in the culture of not just the NFL, but all professional sports.

I’m tired of writing about it, but I know this isn’t the last article I’ll be writing on this subject, and that makes me sad. But still I hold out hope that things can change, and these words will be my last on this despicable subject.

But until next time, I’ll let these be my last words.

God didn’t put men and women on this planet to be enemies, so stop treating them as such. Love each other, and be willing to forgive after an argument or dispute instead of looking to harm to get your point across. Violence is never the answer, in any case.